The Worst Sci-Fi Movie Ever!

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The Worst Sci-Fi Poster Ever!The Worst Sci-Fi Movie Ever!
released 2000
runs 6 minutes
directed by Ted Logan
starring Shadowkiller Bitscape and Willy Logan
Shot on location in Boulder, Colorado, and in the Wilhelm Pictures Studios.


download the web-release edition  45 mb
download the movie with commentary tracks (Linux users only) 62 mb

commentary tracks in mp3 format:
Ted's commentary track 5.5 mb
Willy's commentary track 5.5 mb
Bitscape's commentary track 5.5 mb

Blame it on Thomas Edison. Blame it on Arthur C. Clarke. Blame it on Gene Rodenberry. Blame it on George Lucas. Blame it on my brother Ted. But please don't blame it on me.

This would be the blame for the Worst Sci-Fi Universe. It was primarily a collaborative product of Ted and me, with a few others here and there. While on a sojourn around our neighborhood in north Boulder, Colorado, one Saturday afternoon in August of 2000 (the 5th, to be precise), we realized that a hole had recently been excavated for a house's basement on Nevis street, which runs parallel to our own street. We had recently been discussing film-making, one of our favorite collaborative passtimes. We covered all aspects of the field, from method filming (at that point entirely too popular with the first Survivor) to live motion-capture technology. Naturally, when we stumbled across this hole in the ground, we thought the readily apparent: This would be an excellent location for a movie!.

The obvious setting for this movie would be an alien planet, out in the far reaches of the galaxy, in space unexplored. We did a slight bit of brainstorming (with an emphasis on "slight"), and then headed home.

That night, Ted held a "Fest" in our basement. For the uninitiated, a fest is Ted's version of a party, during which he and some of his friends stay up all night (with the aid of caffienated beverages) and fool around with their computers. About a year after the events described here, I attended a fest, and carefully documented it. It is one of the strangest things ever to be brought upon the Earth.

Following Ted's fest, he and his compatriots (I believe "Bitscape" and "bouncing" were in attendance) staggered off to sleep. Since I had actually slept the night before, I had the whole day ahead of me to waste. When Ted finally awoke, I asked him, "Why don't we film our movie?"

As was typical in our collaborative projects, Ted "directed" while I "starred". Bitscape wanted a part, so we were able to lure him into our twisted web. Either bouncing was not interested, or busy, or smarter than us, but he didn't get involved in our production.

The film began on the bridge of a blue rocketship (the filming model was an inflatable novelty item I had gotten for Christmas). While Ted was directing in his classic style (thinking no more than three scenes ahead), we realized that our ship needed a name. Why not Festus, I suggested, or Festus 7?

The bridge "set" for the Festus 7 was nothing more than Ted's room in the basement. Our planet "location," then, was the hole in the ground we had discovered the day prior. After about two hours of shooting, we had created five minutes of footage, and The Worst Sci-Fi Movie Ever! was born.

The critics attending the "world premiere" ten minutes later thought our title of Worst Sci-Fi Movie Ever! a little presumptuous. Since the day we released it, we've had three alternate nominations for the worst sci-fi movie ever: Plan 9 From Outer Space, Spaceballs, and Battlefield Earth. All three are in serious contention.

By the next summer, we had waited long enough.  It was time to embark on the next Worst Sci-Fi project: The Worst Sci-Fi Sequel Ever!

(Much later, to "celebrate" the fifth anniversary of the production and release of The Worst Sci-Fi Movie Ever!, we contemplated what makes a sci-fi movie really bad, even to the point of taking the coveted mantle of the worst sci-fi movie ever. We wondered what is the worst possible sci-fi movie ever. This was our answer. Our apologies to Arthur C. Clarke and the late Stanley Kubrick.)


Worst Sci-Fi
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The Worst Sci-Fi Sequel Ever!
Copyright 2002-2007 by Willy Logan. All rights reserved.
willy@wilhelm-aerospace.org